The Mutual Admiration Society(49)
I know I should tell my partner in crime what I found, but because Birdie won’t reach the same conclusion I have, I bury it deeper in the grass. If I showed that evidence to her, ya know what she’d do? She’d take it as proof that Louise is not as crummy of a mother as I tell her she is and that would be disastrous. If we have to run away, the tighter she’s tied to our mother’s apron strings, the harder it will be for me to convince her to take off for California.
This is all my fault.
If only I’d minded my own beeswax, our friend wouldn’t be in this hot water. I’m so very sorry, Daddy, but when I started this investigation, how was I supposed to know that Jimmy “Good Egg” McGinty might turn out to be guilty and that your kid, the one who I’m supposed to be giving tender loving care to, might wind up being the key witness for the persecution, who would make sure that your best man paid the price for his crimes?
Wait just a cotton-pickin’ minute.
I’m assuming again!
The only thing really written in stone around here are birthdays, deathdays, and heavenly hopes. And while it is looking very bad for Mr. McGinty, Modern Detection warns all the time in the same chapter that warns all the time about assuming, “If an investigator jumps to a final conclusion without clearly establishing means, motive, and opportunity, their entire case could be in jeopardy.”
FACT: We got the medal evidence, but Birdie and me only got two of the three main ingredients that a gumshoe is supposed to have before they hand a suspect over to the cops on a silver platter!
PROOF: Mr. McGinty’s means are his strong arms, and he had the opportunity, because he hardly ever leaves his post at Holy Cross at night, except to play bingo every Saturday and to eat his supper at Fish Fry Friday, and today is Thursday. But what would his motive be? Like my sister would say, Why . . . why . . . why . . . why? would he do our principal in?
This is very unprofessional conduct for the president of a detecting and blackmailing business to admit to, but ya know what? I honestly don’t give a crud what evidence Birdie and me have found out about Mr. McGinty so far, and my tummy, for once, agrees with me. Modern Detection does, too. “Perhaps the most vital of all the TOOLS OF THE TRADE an investigator possesses is his gut instinct.” Until we discover the why of the crime, Mr. McGinty is only around 66% guilty, so that’s at least a little ray of hope at the end of the tunnel. If we keep our noses to the grindstone, The Mutual Admiration Society could find another person who we don’t like so much that we could blackmail for $$$$ or earn a big reward for when we turn him in to the cops for kidnap and murder.
Q. Could we still get one of those and-they-all-lived-happily-ever-after endings to this case, instead of one of those really Grimm ones?
A. Without a doubt.
14
A TURN FOR THE WORST
Well, like a famous guy named Johnny whose hobby it was to roam around America planting fruit trees might say, How do ya like them apples? (Joke!)
Things are really starting to look up around here, which is a nice change of pace. Of course, I know that just because I’m hopeful The Mutual Admiration Society won’t ever find out why the caretaker of the cemetery isn’t guilty of those crimes, doesn’t mean that we won’t and that he isn’t. The time might come that, like it or not, we’ll have to face the music and admit to ourselves that Mr. McGinty is the kidnapper and murderer after all.
But until then, I’m praying that after Birdie, Charlie, and me talk to a few other people in the neighborhood, we’ll come across a different bad guy to pin the crimes on. One who has all the ingredients we need to prove that he’s the guilty party, including the motive, which means that Birdie and me gotta chop-chop and get to work. Only we can’t do that until she’s done with her visit with Daddy, because that’d just be asking for her to go unruly on me again if I bug her when she’s hugging, kissing, and whispering into his gravestone, and that’s fine. I don’t mind waiting a little longer, because it’d be much better to explain my new plan to search for another suspect later, during our Mutual Admiration meeting. That way I won’t have to repeat myself to Charlie.
We don’t have time anymore to get together in his bomb shelter, which is the other location where we conduct our business, and that’s a crying shame. It’s cool and soundproof and Birdie likes it down there, too, because there are a lot of canned goods. But as Modern Detection states: “It’s important for a detective to remain flexible during an investigation, for you never know what challenges might arise.” Daddy agreed with him. “Ya need to roll with the punches, kiddo,” he used to tell me, so that’s what we’ll do. Get together for a very quick meeting on Charlie’s back porch about what’s already happened this morning, and then we have to be on our way up to St. Kate’s, so I can confess to Father Ted before his 1:00 p.m. quitting time. I’ll fill the both of them in on my brand-new plan on the fly, and once I get my confessing out of the way, the three of us will roll up our sleeves and get busy working on THE CASE OF THE MISSING NUN WHO MIGHT BE KIDNAPPED AND MURDERED BUT BY SOMEBODY WHO IS NOT MR. MCGINTY.
As the president of our society, I feel it’s my responsibility to come up with a few names to toss into the ring before the meeting, but all I can think of is one. #2 on my SHIT LIST.
Q. Is it asking too much to make Butch Seeback be the one I saw skulking around the cemetery last night with the dead body?